Civil War scholars have often sought new insights into the
United States' most deadly conflict by comparing it to other wars.
Charles Reagan Wilson, for example, compared the religious
dimensions of the American conflict to the English and Spanish
Civil Wars. Despite many important contributions in the last decade
to the study of religion during the American Civil War,
surprisingly little work has been done since Wilson's essay to
understand whether or not particular religious themes and issues
during the war were unique to it or were similar to those of other
American conflicts. For example, though military historians have
long understood the connections and parallels between the Mexican
War and American Civil War, the growing field of Civil War
religious history has yet to compare these wars in any substantial
way.

Currently, scholarship on religion during the Mexican War lags
well behind that on religion during the Civil War. Much of the
published historical scholarship that mentions religion in the
Mexican War is largely relegated to such topics as the Irish
American deserters in the Mexican army known as the San Patricios,
the Mormon Battalion, and allusions to evangelical influences on
wartime antislavery rhetoric. While recent works by Tyler V.
Johnson and John C. Pinheiro have provided welcome updates to older
dissertations on Catholicism and Protestant anti-Catholicism during
the war, there is still a lot of room for further inquiry into
religion during the conflict with Mexico. Drawing religious
connections between the two conflicts can help Mexican War scholars
see how religious themes in the war with Mexico were related to and
influenced future developments in American religious history.

Such a comparative study is especially valuable for examining
Roman Catholic Americans because both conflicts followed periods of
substantial anti-Catholic nativism in American politics. During
both, some Catholic newspaper editors tried to use examples of
Catholic patriotism and military service to attack nativism in
American society and politics. Thus, after the Battle of Bull Run
in July 1861, Patrick Donahoe, the publisher of the largest
Catholic newspaper in the nation declared, "Let us hear no more
'nativism,' for it is now dead, disgraced, and
offensive, while Irish Catholic patriotism and bravery are true to
the nation and indispensable to it in every point of
consideration."

Click for larger view

Patrick Donahoe patriotically supported both the Mexican and
Civil Wars, the latter despite his fierce opposition to
abolitionism. His newspaper, the Boston Pilot, was a
widely read and influential Catholic newspaper. Image originally
published in James Bernard Cullen: The Story of the Irish in
Boston (Boston: J. B. Cullen, 1889).

Closely examining Catholic newspapers published throughout the
United States provides a good means of understanding Catholics'
experiences in both mid-nineteenth century conflicts. While not
claiming entirely to represent the diverse viewpoints of Catholic
Americans, when taken together these lay and clerical editors
represented a wide range of Catholic opinion during the
midnineteenth century. Additionally, this study draws upon the most
important Catholic newspapers from across the United States and
from different ethnic groups (Irish, German, French, and
"Anglo-Saxon" Americans) to present as comprehensive as possible a
picture of American Catholicism during both conflicts. All but one
of the newspapers selected were printed during both conflicts,
which provides a sense of continuity between the 1840s and
1860s.

Ultimately, the course of each war made many Catholic editors
and leaders apathetic or even outright opposed to the United
States' war effort. Irish American deserters serving in the Mexican
army during the conflict with Mexico and Irish Catholics'
large-scale participation in the New York City Draft Riots in 1863
enraged non-Catholic Americans. Acrimonious debates between pro-war
and pro-peace Catholic editors in the North badly damaged both
church unity and efforts to forge a patriotic identity for
Catholicism in that part of the nation. Anti-Catholic nativism thus
remained a viable force in the United States after each war.
Angered by negative assessments of their loyalty and the resurgence
of anti-Catholicism at the end of each conflict, Catholic leaders
rejected assimilation and instead helped build a separate Catholic
subculture to keep their community apart from a seemingly
unappreciative and hostile society. The course of both...

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